Illinois Governor JB Pritzker delivered one of his most explosive speeches yet, launching a blistering attack on President Donald Trump and accusing him of embracing authoritarian leadership, undermining democracy, and dividing America. Speaking before an energized crowd of Texas Democrats, Pritzker criticized Trump's immigration policies, handling of the economy, and approach to governing, while urging Democrats to stop looking back and start fighting for the future.
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00:00Thank you, thank you, thank you. Hello, Texas Democrats! Love being here. Thank
00:07you so much to Jean. Thank you for that extraordinary introduction. Thank you
00:12and Nicole and the entire caucus who we became close together because of all of
00:19those challenges. And I just want you to know that they really showed America,
00:25they showed Democrats what it means to stand up and fight back. Thank you, thank
00:32you. I also want to thank your chairman of the Texas Democratic Party, of course,
00:39Kendall Scudder. Thank you for your leadership. Thank you for inviting me.
00:45You are unleashing a blue wave across the country from right here in Texas. I've
00:55been all over the country working to get our party fired up about winning in
01:01November. But that's right. But no one needs to fire up Texas Democrats because
01:09you all have been baking in the crucible for decades. You fire me up. So today I
01:22want to talk about what Texas Democrats have taught me and what all of you are
01:29teaching the rest of the country about optimism versus faith. I've been governor
01:36of Illinois now for almost eight years and it's the best job I've ever had. Maybe
01:41it's the best job I ever will have. That must be a cousin. Back when I was first
01:56elected in 2018, I used to think that the secret to being successful was my
02:02penchant to be an optimist. They called me Governor Sunshine, a name that I earned
02:10because unlike many of the leaders who had preceded me, I was an unrelenting
02:15champion of the untapped potential of the state of Illinois. And I believed that
02:21better days were ahead and I communicated that belief every chance I got to anyone
02:27who would listen. That optimism fueled the early days of my administration where we
02:33raised the minimum wage, where we lifted hundreds of thousands of people out of
02:38poverty as a result. We guaranteed abortion rights for every woman in Illinois, invested
02:52$40 billion in roads and bridges and airports and schools. We legalized cannabis. Oh, I see you.
03:05Right? And we expunged 800,000 people's cannabis convictions. And we hired more
03:17schoolteachers and reduced class sizes. So my optimism drove an entire year of
03:27legislative and political successes. And then came 2020. The euphoria of our 2018
03:35Democratic electoral victories gave way to a global pandemic. And the realities of
03:42the utter incompetence of the first Trump presidency set in. For two years I
03:50navigated the turbulent waters of COVID surges, our overwhelmed hospital systems, a
03:56broken national supply chain and the daily whims of a president who was clearly
04:02bewildered by the severity of the crisis around him. It was hard to be optimistic
04:08during those days. Hard to find Governor Sunshine amidst ventilators shortages and
04:15tens of thousands of deaths. Business closures and the White House press conferences urging
04:21people to inject bleach. But then came a vaccine and a new president. As the world
04:30started to seem to return to normal, I let optimism seep back in. I worked on important economic
04:40development projects in my state. I expanded early childhood education and childcare and feeling just
04:52optimistic enough, I ran for and won reelection. And things were looking up. My renewed optimism seemed
05:02warranted. But then Governor Abbott bussed 50,000 migrants to Chicago, many in the middle of winter, with no coats,
05:15left to brave the freezing temperatures,
05:18with no food for their families. And Abbott was unwilling to coordinate, we tried, unwilling to coordinate with us so
05:26that these people didn't needlessly suffer.
05:29During all of this, using the immigration issue as his cudgel, Donald Trump found a foothold in the consciousness of
05:37the nation once again.
05:39Something dark and ugly flooded into our politics as if a gate around our worst instincts had crumbled.
05:49And before I knew it, we found ourselves in the midst of a second Trump administration, one where all of
05:56the tenuous
05:57restraint of his first term was gone. I watched the president of the United States delight in wreaking havoc on
06:05working families in Illinois and all across America,
06:09on our people, on our economy. It's ironic that today, on the eve of our 250th anniversary as a country,
06:18a man sits in the White House who is everything the founders feared most as they launched their experiment in
06:26democratic
06:27self-government. An uncontrollable, narcissistic, authoritarian president who acts like a king.
06:37Trump sent masked federal agents in unmarked cars to Houston, to Austin, to San Antonio, to Corpus Christi, to Minneapolis,
06:48to Chicago, and more.
06:49He rounded up black and brown people, neighbors and school children, moms and dads, citizens and non-citizens alike.
06:58He showed contempt for the pillars of our justice system, for habeas corpus and birthright citizenship and due process.
07:07He declared war on our allies. Those are the ones we need.
07:14And he made peace with enemies that we don't need.
07:19He took a once booming economy and did everything possible to break it.
07:24And at the White House, he tore down the hallowed walls of the East Wing and he demolished the moral
07:31values in the West Wing.
07:34He looked at every symbol of our nation's democracy, everyone, and thought, how can I make this into a gilded
07:40tribute to myself?
07:43He has accomplished in his presidency what he never achieved in his business career.
07:49He's finally making a profit.
08:01And Trump has turned 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue from the People's House to a nut house.
08:10Where he's retreated to the last and only respite of the desperate and the damned, paranoid self-delusion.
08:18Now, I know we Democrats are having a conversation right now about how much we should talk about Donald Trump.
08:24Trust me, I'm just as tired as you all are of having this man in our lives, seemingly every minute
08:31of every day.
08:33But I don't think that we can offer a solution for the future unless we fully and honestly confront what
08:40he is doing to this country right now.
08:42Because like it or not, Donald Trump is a reflecting pool of our politics.
08:57You can paint the bottom blue, but it won't conceal the polluted water above.
09:09Which brings me back to optimism versus faith.
09:15Optimism will sometimes get you through the near term.
09:18It's like one of those little energy packets that they give you during a marathon.
09:22A little boost of sugar to help deal with the next mile.
09:26And maybe you run a great next mile, but then you turn the corner and there are ten more to
09:32go.
09:34And if those next miles are uphill in the heat of the day, that little energy packet cannot sustain you
09:41anymore.
09:42Actually, given how long the race is, it made you run faster than you should have.
09:47And it messed up your pace.
09:50That's when optimism becomes the yoke on your back as opposed to the spring in your step.
09:57Faith, on the other hand, is the thing that drives all the preparation that goes into a marathon.
10:05Like the long runs on weekends.
10:09Like the training sprints in early mornings.
10:12It is years of running shorter races on less arduous terrain to build confidence and endurance.
10:20And it's trying again and again to beat your best mile time when there is no one around to cheer
10:26you on.
10:27That is faith.
10:29Optimism will get you through a mile.
10:31Faith will get you through a marathon.
10:35I learned that lesson.
10:42I learned that lesson when we welcomed the Texas House Democrats to Illinois just about a year ago.
10:54That's where I got to spend some time with James Tallarico and Gina Hinojosa and Gene Wu and Tony Rose.
11:02Well, all of their colleagues.
11:05And here's what I was struck by.
11:08You all had spent a long time fighting, a long running uphill in the heat.
11:15You knew that despite your best efforts, eventually you were going to have to return to Texas and deal with
11:22a likely redistricting loss.
11:25So when you broke quorum, you were not lured by any optimism around winning a short-term battle over the
11:33Texas map.
11:34You were there because your faith gave you confidence in what could be accomplished in the end.
11:42It was instructive and inspiring.
11:47Last week, I had the pleasure of attending the opening of the Obama Presidential Center.
12:00It was in Chicago.
12:02It was a perfect day.
12:03We were surrounded by really, really good people.
12:07Mark Anthony sang Biber Mi Bida.
12:11And we all danced in our seats.
12:13And for a moment, I remembered what it was like to feel a little bit of joy in politics.
12:23But it was President Obama's speech that will sit with me much longer.
12:29Towards the end of that speech, he talked about Reverend Theodore Parker, an abolitionist who first uttered the famous words
12:37about the arc of the moral universe being long but bending toward justice.
12:42President Obama noted that Parker did not live to see the true realization of his life's work and said that
12:50Parker's words were, and I'm quoting, a declaration of faith, a defiant call not to abandon hope or to give
13:00way to fear, even in the face of cruelty and bitter disappointment, even in the face of impossible odds.
13:09President Obama, in his typically elegant way, was saying that what we need right now is faith.
13:17Because faith is the water flowing through rock carving a beautiful canyon over time.
13:24Over these last few years, despite everything in part because of you, I have found faith.
13:32And as the Bible says, faith without works is dead.
13:38The American promise, the one that we all, well, we sell to all the people who come to our shores,
13:46that American promise is broken.
13:50The vast majority of folks in this country cannot afford a home or pay for an education or retire with
13:59ease.
13:59Our health care system serves insurance companies, not people.
14:10Most leaders of big tech companies have abandoned the idea that, well, they would build things to make our lives
14:19better.
14:20And they've replaced it with the idea that they should only make their lives better.
14:28Companies seem to care, well, not at all, if the people who work in their factories and their offices can
14:34afford the goods and services that they're selling.
14:37And as the essentials of life have become more and more unaffordable, so too have the joys.
14:46Families can't take a summer vacation because everything from a road trip to a beach rental or a few days
14:54at Disney World are now priced only for the 1%.
15:00Private equity is buying up little league teams and ice skating rinks and they're charging parents to video their children
15:08hitting a home run or a hat trick in a hockey rink.
15:16Football game, just to go to a professional football game, costs $1,000 for a family of four now to
15:22attend.
15:22Ticket brokers and dynamic pricing have made the coming of age rite of passage of seeing your favorite live band
15:31completely out of reach.
15:33Life is not about just getting up, going to a job and grinding it out until you die.
15:40Life is found in all the moments of joy that spring up in between surviving.
15:49It's no wonder everyone is miserable.
15:52Everything that makes us happy is drifting out of reach.
15:56And when everyone is miserable, anger and cruelty become a potent weapon in politics.
16:03These problems didn't start with Donald Trump. No, they didn't.
16:07He just exploited them.
16:09And if we're being honest, we Democrats let him.
16:14Our party's leaders grew complacent, thinking good intentions could replace good work.
16:22They let nostalgia for parts of our political past replace efforts to innovate our political future.
16:30They forgot what it is to strive and to fail and then to get up and strive again.
16:36That is what people do every single day, get up and strive again.
16:41But unwilling to break old customs to build new foundations, it seems like everyone on our side thought democracy was
16:48a garden that didn't need tending.
16:50Forgetting that weeds need to be pulled up by their roots, not just occasionally mowed down.
17:02It has seemed like we Democrats were full of the heady vapors of optimism, not the grounded roots of true
17:11faith.
17:12The headwinds have been blowing against us for seemingly a very long time.
17:18But recently, I've begun to feel a mild shift in the breeze.
17:26The change is slight.
17:28You might miss it if you blink too fast, but it's there.
17:31Not just in the electoral winds of the past year, or the shifting polls, or the growing defiance of once
17:39compliant GOP politicians.
17:41Not just in previously, well, timid politicians suddenly finding their voice.
17:48Not just in those things.
17:49No.
17:50You can see the wind shift in the newcomers to Democratic politics.
17:54The mayors, the state legislators, the first time elected officials who have breezed onto the stage like a breath of
18:01fresh air.
18:02Brimming with ideas and cowed by no one's petty insults.
18:07And the public is on board with the new winds of blowing.
18:17You can see it in this country's embrace of our World Cup visitors.
18:22It's as if, over the last few weeks, our citizens wanted to do everything possible to say to our global
18:29cousins,
18:29hey, those guys in the White House, Donald Trump and Stephen Miller and J.D. Vance, they're not us.
18:44And we say to them, come eat our ranch dressing and drink at our bars.
18:50Drink all the beer and enjoy our free tortilla chips and marvel at our sunsets.
18:57Because the idea of the United States has never belonged to one man or one political party.
19:05It belongs to our people and our communities.
19:15What we're telling all those visitors is we get to decide who we are, not them.
19:21I think it's time that we make clear that America is good and decent and kind.
19:28It's time to demand from our leaders that they show empathy to the struggling, compassion to the destitute.
19:36I don't think cruelty is some virtue that shows us how much of a man you are.
19:42Blatant racism doesn't make you tough, it just makes you a racist.
19:53And I don't think that the constant barrage of insults that come from the president's social media account is some
20:00fresh new brand of politics.
20:02I just think it's mean.
20:05And I think that we should say that to the American people plainly and clearly because most Americans choose kindness
20:12over cruelty.
20:15Now, I've been a Democrat my whole life.
20:18And I've seen our party twist ourselves into some pretzels over the years.
20:23But none as intense as the one that we're twisting ourselves into right now.
20:28I'm all in favor of self-reflection and analysis after a loss.
20:34It's a healthy part of a process.
20:36But somewhere in the last two years we've turned our penchant for soul searching into introspection and made it an
20:45industry.
20:46There are too many books.
20:48I mean too many books.
20:49And too many podcasts about the books.
20:52And too many books about the podcasts.
20:55The midterm elections are just a few months away.
20:58And it's time to stop talking about, well, doing the thing and just go do the thing.
21:12And that's what you Texas Democrats understand better than anyone.
21:16Because you already know that for every national pundit who waxes poetic about whether or not James Tallarico or Gina
21:24Hinojosa can win Texas,
21:26there need to be a thousand Texas Democrats out knocking doors and making phone calls.
21:36You already know you have miles left to run in the marathon.
21:40But you have trained for this.
21:43You have faith.
21:45And your faith has given this optimist a whole lot of hope.
21:49So let's get out there and win this thing.
21:53Are you ready for the fight?
21:56Are you ready for the fight?
21:57Are you ready for the fight?
21:58Let's go get them everyone.
22:01Thank you very much.
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